


Northward Bound

by starbirdrampant (ineasako22)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Female!Bilbo, Gardening, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-01-08 06:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12249159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineasako22/pseuds/starbirdrampant
Summary: After the death of her parents, Bella Baggins is at a loss at what to do with her life. Enter an old family friend and the opportunity to do something incredibly un-Baggins-like.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a nosy cousin, a familiar stranger, and an adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks be to my ever patient beta imaginary_golux.

“You’d always know there’d be something interesting about to happen when Gandalf came to visit,” Bella’s mother used to tell her. But that had been many years ago, and Gandalf’s visiting even longer; so when a knock came at her front door one Saturday morning, Bella had simply taken another hasty sip of tea and buried her head in her book, content to ignore any of her busybody relations that had “happened” to drop by. But the knocking didn’t stop, merely pausing in fits and starts until it was strong enough to rattle the door off its hinges.

Annoyed, Bella set her book to the side, sliding a bookmark into its place with all deliberate speed before leaving her study and moving down the hall to the door.

“Now Lobelia,” she said as she yanked the door open. “Is it really necessary to–”

It wasn’t Lobelia.

The old man’s eyes twinkled as he took in Bella’s somewhat rumpled housecoat and the faded pink moccasin slippers that she’d gotten half a lifetime ago for Christmas before folding away his amusement into nothing more than crinkled eyes and a wry half-smile.

“Good morning,” he said. “This is the home of Miss Bella Baggins, is it not?”

Astonished – and expecting someone entirely different to be behind the door-rattling knock – she stood there with her front door open and a stranger on her mat for far longer than was proper, and probably would have stayed there until supper came around if she hadn’t spied her cousin Lobelia’s pink and green sunhat bobbing at the far end of the lane, clearly headed for her house.

“Come in,” she said quickly, opening the door all the way and stepping aside. She didn’t quite pull him inside and shut the door, but it was a near thing; and if her visitor was amused by how quickly she shut the door and drew the curtains in the front parlour, then he said not a word about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her hands half-heartedly fluttering in her cousin’s direction. “It’s just that…” The doorbell rung, rather insistently, and Bella winced. “Let’s move into the kitchen,” she told the older gentleman, pulling her memories of good manners and hospitality around her even as she securely fastened her housecoat over her nightgown. “Would you like some tea?”

The old man smiled. “I suppose it is too early for some red wine. So yes. Tea would be lovely.”

She blinked at the odd statement, but the man seemed pleasant enough, so she pulled down her second best tea set and bustled through the motions of brewing tea, determinedly ignoring the ringing of the doorbell. He took the cup she handed him with evident relish, dropping in an astonishing four sugar cubes and a generous pouring of cream before inhaling the fragrant steam with closed eyes and a half-smile.

“It is good to see that dear Belladonna’s tea blend has not been forgotten,” he said, taking a long sip, despite the whorls of steam still rising from the cup, “even if I have.”

Bella startled at the sound of her mother’s name from a stranger’s lips. “I’m sorry?” she asked, though a memory was tugging at her like a child tugging on a mother’s skirts. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“We have, though you may not remember it,” he told her, taking another sip of tea. “It was a very long time ago, after all. But you knew me as Gandalf then and Gandalf I am still. I was a friend to your grandfather and then to your mother and now I have come to be a friend to you, Bella Baggins; and it is to that effect that I believe I may have a proposition you would find most intriguing.”

“Gandalf...” she mused, as memories of long parties and lights that danced like magic on an ink-black sky resurfaced from the depths of her mind. “Oh I remember you! You made the fireworks for my grandfather’s parties!”

He smiled. “Well I’m pleased you remember something of me, even if it was just my fireworks.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon–”

He waved away her apologies. “It’s quite alright, I’m not here for that.” He leaned forward with a mischievous look in his eyes. “I am here because I have a proposition for you. An ‘adventure,’ if you will. Is it true that you’ve inherited your mother’s skill at gardening?”

“I– yes… It’s true.” She set the teacup down and dropped her hands to her lap where no one could see her twisting her napkin into a wrinkled mess. “Though it’s been awhile since I’ve done more than weeding.”

His gaze softened. “I had heard. You have my condolences.”

Bella’s hands clenched. “Yes, well…” She busied herself pouring more tea. “You said you has a proposition for me?”

Gandalf smiled like he knew a secret. “I do indeed. It has recently come to my attention that a friend of mine is in the process of restoring his family home.” He regarded her over the rim of his teacup. “I’ve also heard that he needs the help of a master-gardener to return his lands to their former glory.”

Bella laughed, though it held a bitter edge. “I’m no ‘master,’ Gandalf. Just an old maid who likes to putter around with dirt.”

“Not a master?” he exclaimed. “Did you or did you not win first prize in the Hobbiton Harvest Festival for your tomatoes for seven years running?”

“Tomatoes do not a gardener make!” she snapped, then flinched. “That was years ago, Gandalf. I’m afraid I don’t have much of a stomach for gardening anymore.”

He hummed thoughtfully, unperturbed by her outburst. “I see. Perhaps it is a good thing then that I have come.” His eyes, blue-gray and shrewd, pierced her straight through to her core. “What if I told you that this proposition of mine would take you far from your mother’s garden and your father’s study and any cousins or aunts with their meddlesome opinions?”

Bella’s breath caught, her fingers clenched in her napkin. “I– I’m afraid I must decline. I have a number of obligations here, my family for one, and…” She trailed off, her gaze caught on the framed portraits that hung above the mantlepiece. “I have obligations,” she repeated, as if trying to convince herself.

Gandalf’s teacup settled on its saucer with a quiet clink. “If you have obligations,” he said, not ungently. “I’ll not keep you. But the Belladonna I knew would be disheartened indeed to see her daughter so out of sorts.”

She smiled, her grief lurking in the corners. “I am not my mother.”

“No,” he said, his gaze inscrutable. “You are not.”

He rose and collected his long, gray coat from where it hung in the hall, settling it just so on his shoulders before reaching into the pocket and presenting Bella with a simple, off-white business card. “In case you change your mind,” he told her. “Simply call upon Balin Fundinson in the Green Dragon Inn before 1 o’clock and he will make the arrangements.”

With that, he set off down the lane, his strides long and loping, with the front door left swinging in his wake.

Absently, Bella pulled the door shut and latched it – for Lobelia’s hat could still be seen lurking in the hedgerows a few houses down – before holding the card up to the morning light beaming into her front parlour.

The paper was pressed linen cardstock, crisply cut, with a texture almost like ridged velvet. On it an ornate hexagonal crest was printed with silver leaf above stark black letters that spelled out the name “Balin Fundinson” and a phone number in an elegant, minimalistic font.

_Well whoever you are,_ she thought, _you certainly have excellent taste in business cards_. She slipped the card into the pocket of her housecoat, intending to look at it later – it really was a beautiful card, clearly designed by someone with an attention to detail – when the doorbell rang.

“Oh drat it,” she muttered. Manners or not, she really was not quite up to visitors this morning and if she could have a moment’s peace to put on something other than a house-robe or slippers that would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much. She toyed with the idea of simply going upstairs and pretending she wasn’t home, but the shrill screech of her cousin through the door quickly rendered that plan moot.

“Bella Baggins!” Lobelia cried, her strident voice unfortunately _un_ muffled by four inches of solid hardwood. “I know you’re in there! I saw a _man_ come galloping out of your garden just minutes ago!”

Well that tore it. Bella knew from long experience that there was no stopping Lobelia if she got her hands on a piece of particularly juicy gossip. And at thirty-six, and unmarried to boot, having any man emerge from her house at nine in the morning – nevermind that Gandalf was old enough to be her grandfather – was a recipe for juicy gossip if ever there was one.

So Bella opened the door.

“Yes Lobelia?” she asked, catching her cousin in the midst of raising her hand to prod at the doorbell again. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Lobelia gaped at Bella’s – admittedly somewhat threadbare – housecoat, for once shocked into silence.

Bella stepped aside, pressing her lips firmly together to prevent any kind of reaction to her cousin’s astonishment. “Would you like to come inside?” she asked.

Lobelia stepped into the foyer, pulling off her gloves and hat and setting them neatly on the entryway table before making a beeline for the front parlour.

“Well?” she asked, perching on the edge of a chair. “Are you going to tell me who it was?”

Bella smiled politely. “Who what was, Lobelia?”

The look her cousin threw her could have bleached linen. “Who the _man_ was, Belladonna, don’t be obtuse.” Lobelia sniffed. “ _Well?_ Who on earth could be wanting to call on you at _this_ hour of the morning?”

Bella felt her smile start to crack like old porcelain. “If you must know, Lobelia, it was Gandalf Grayhame. You remember, he was a friend of our grandfather’s?”

“Gandalf Grayhame, here?” Lobelia gasped. “Why he hasn’t been seen in over twenty years. Not since Grandfather passed away. What on earth did he want?”

“He had… a business proposition for me.” Bella explained, her fingers straying to her pocket before she clasped them firmly in her lap. “A job, if you will.”

Somehow it was possible for Lobelia to sound even more scandalized. “A job?” Lobelia exclaimed. “Why I never! As if a Baggins would need a job! The cheek of it!”

“He sought to help a close friend of his,” Bella told her, hoping to stave off the usual histrionics. “They need a gardener to help set their family home to rights. It’s perfectly respectable,” she muttered when Lobelia’s nose raised high enough to become a perch.

“A _gardener_!” Lobelia shrieked while Bella thought longingly of her now-cold teapot back in the kitchen. “Asking a _Baggins_ to be a gardener like the common help! How dare he, showing up back here and demanding a Baggins’ help without so much as a by-your-leave. Why I’ll show him a piece of my mind, see if I don’t. I–”

Bella sighed, resigned to letting Lobelia’s rapidly increasing hysterics wash over her. She loved her cousin, she reminded herself, she really did. Lobelia was, after all, quite charming when she put her mind to it. It was only in the past year – or ten – that she’d gotten so _demanding_ in wanting to know if Bella was going to be married and when it might happen, or if anyone had caught her eye and who it might be, or if–

Bella stood, her smile wide enough to show a hint of teeth. “ _Thank you_ , Lobelia,” she said, cutting through her cousin’s histrionics. “I’ll be sure to inform Gandalf of your opinions next time I see him, shall I?” 

Lobelia blinked up at her, mouth gaping open mid-word. 

Bella smiled wider, taking a step back towards the foyer. “I appreciate your visit, but as you can see, I am not dressed for company.”

“Well, I never,” Lobelia sniffed, rising from the couch. Her shoes made sharp, angry clicks as she strode back to the foyer and snatched her hat and gloves from the table. “We’ll just see what Aunt Donnarima has to say about this… this… _miscreant_ returning to town. You stay right there, Belladonna. We’ll have this settled shortly.”

“Yes, _thank you_ Lobelia,” Bella said, closing the door on her cousin’s retort. Only when she could see Lobelia’s pink and green garden hat flouncing off down the lane did Bella sag against the door.

“Goodness,” she muttered to her blessedly empty parlour. “I thought she would never leave.” She quickly retreated back to the kitchen, quite firmly resolved _not_ to answer the door again before tea-time, and half-heartedly checked her teapot. Stone cold, as she expected, and not really worth the effort of re-heating.

Without realizing it, Bella found her fingers had migrated back to her pocket and were tracing the outline of the card inside. It was such a little thing, she thought, to hold so much potential for change. So much potential for…

She dropped the card like a hot coal and it skittered across the smooth varnish of her tabletop, coming to a sliding stop next to Gandalf’s abandoned tea cup.

“No, no, no, no,” she admonished herself, grabbing the cup and saucer and nearly flinging them into the sink. “I can’t go. I...shouldn’t. No, I shouldn’t. I _do_ have obligations here and there’s the house and Lobelia and…”

_Yes,_ her Tookish side reminded her. _Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about Lobelia’s gossiping?_

“I am perfectly capable of handling my cousin,” she said, soap suds flying.

_But do you want to?_ Do _you want to spend every day worrying about your family’s good opinion?_

“I…”

_Don’t you want a house and a garden that doesn’t remind you of your parents?_

She placed the teacup and saucer in the drying rack, carefully pressing her shaking hands against the countertop. That was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? The house that had once held so much love now held far too much grief. And the garden…

Bella glanced out the kitchen window, grimacing at the state of the back garden. The front garden was at least weeded once a week, mostly by Hamfast Gamgee and his son, but the back was as snarled as it had been when her mother had died. And that had been two years ago. 

Try however she might, Bella just couldn’t bring herself to work in the garden her mother had built.

Her hand wavered over the card, torn between snatching it up or throwing it away, when the grandfather clock in the hallway began to strike the hour in long, rolling, tones. One, two, three, four…

Gandalf’s voice piped up in the back of her mind, “If you change your mind, simply call upon Balin Fundinson in the Green Dragon Inn before 1 o’clock and–”

Bella jumped as the twelfth bell sounded, her eyes flying wide. She bolted up the stairs, scrambling into a sundress and shoes before clattering back downstairs, seizing the card off the informal dining table, and rushing out the door.

She burst into the Green Dragon Inn at precisely 12:45, her hair seized in flyaway curls and her dress windblown and wrinkled. The barkeep – one of the Proudfoots, sorry Proud _feet_ , clan – eyed her suspiciously at her arrival, but shook his head disapprovingly when she did nothing more than stand in the door, breathing as if she’d run a mile.

“I’m sorry,” she asked him, once she’d gotten her breath back. “Do you by chance have a ‘Balin Fundinson’ lodging here?”

He jerked his head towards the booths that lined the back of the Inn’s pub, where a gentleman sat sequestered, a leather-bound notebook – of the type that businessmen used – sitting open before him.

Bella approached somewhat cautiously, attempting to put her tattered appearance to rights. Embarrassment burned high in her cheeks at her unkempt state, but she kept her head high and pasted on a bright smile.

“Hello? Mr. Fundinson?” she asked, creeping into the gentleman’s field of view.

His gaze rose from his notebook, his silver-haired eyebrows creeping upwards in surprise. “Good afternoon,” he said courteously, sliding a bookmark into his notebook and setting it aside. “How might I help you?”

“My–” she swallowed. “My name is Bella Baggins. Gandalf Grayhame said you would be expecting me?”

Mr. Fundinson smiled, though she could really only see it in the crinkling of his eyes at the corners, as the rest was hidden in a prodigious white beard. “Ah, Mrs. Baggins. I wondered if you might be by soon.”

“It’s ‘miss,’ if you please,” she said. “I never married.”

“My apologies. Miss Baggins.” He looked down his long nose at her, though his gaze was kind. “Have you come for the gardening position then?”

“I… yes.” she said, trying to straighten her spine, which seemed to be about as sturdy as a thin willow withe. “Yes I have.”

“Very well then.” He re-opened the notebook and slid out a sheaf of paper, covered in dense blocks of print. “What you’ll find here is a standard contract, with summaries of your salary, housing arrangements, and other potential out-of-pocket expenses. You will be given lodging on the grounds, so you need not worry about finding rooms, and ah. Here you are.” He handed her the contract and a pen and waited for her to read through the text.

It seemed reasonable enough, for an employment contract. Bella carefully didn’t react at the salary amount – certainly much more than she’d ever gotten from a job before. Her parents tended to be the type that insisted on their only daughter being employed more for the character-building aspect of it rather than the money. All in all, the contract seemed eminently reasonable, so she marked her name in neat cursive at the dotted line and made sure to fill out the rest of her personal information thoroughly.

“If I may ask, Mr. Fundinson,” she said once he’d gathered the contract back into his notebook. “Why come all this way south on Mr. Gandalf’s word that I’m a gardener?”

He smiled. “Gandalf helped my employer recently regain Erebor House, with the only stipulation that we hire a particular friend of his to help us with renovating the grounds.” His briefcase clicked shut. “We saw no reason to refuse him after he’d explained your...gift, shall we say, with plants.”

With that, he extended his hand to shake hers – she appreciated that his handshake was neither too weak nor too crushing – and left the pub, leaving a handsome tip on the bar. Indeed, the barkeep even nodded back as Mr. Fundinson departed, despite being known for his usual sour disposition towards the locals. Bella was left sitting in the booth, her mind blankly buzzing.

Gandalf had told this family about her? Never mind that she hadn’t seen him since she was but a child. He’d clearly had her in mind even before he’d told her about the job.

_How peculiar,_ she thought, hurrying out of the pub. _I wonder why._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this has been sitting in my google drive for a while, and I figured I might as well start posting. Apologies if there's anything too wildly inaccurate!
> 
> Come see me at my tumblr: [starbirdrampant](https://starbirdrampant.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a cottage, a castle, and a dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks be to my ever patient beta imaginary_golux.

A week later saw Bella ensconced in a train car with two well-packed suitcases headed north to the Highlands of Scotland. She wasn’t terribly worried about leaving the home she’d lived in all her life; she’d let it to her young cousin Drogo Baggins and his new wife Primula on the condition that they’d take care of the old house – never mind that Lobelia’s shrieks of outrage were said to be heard from over half a mile away. But she couldn’t help but feel slightly trepidatious about uprooting herself to the North, of all places, just because she had a flight of distinctly Tookish fancy.

Still, no use crying over spilt milk (or signed contracts). Despite what was sure to be a significant culture shock, Bella was determined to make a good impression on her new employers. Except...when she arrived at the train station – a tiny one, well outside of Inverness – no one was there.

It was well after dark, and threatening rain to boot, and Bella stood under the one, non-flickering lamp in the station parking lot clutching at her hat and coat and wondering vaguely if she’d gotten off at the wrong stop. She pondered fishing out Mr. Fundinson’s card from her luggage and calling him – though she suddenly recalled him saying that he would be out of the country on business – when a pickup truck trundled into the parking lot and jerked to a stop at the curb. 

A man with the most astounding felt hat Bella had ever seen popped out of the cab. “I’m so sorry, Miss Baggins!” he shouted, hurrying over. “I’m afraid I lost track of time.” He stuck out a hand, grinning. “I’m Bofur, I’m the head woodsman for Erebor.”

Bella shook his hand, grinning helplessly in the face of his beaming smile. “Bella Baggins, at your service.” His words registered. “I’m sorry, ‘woodsman?’”

She didn’t think it was possible for him to smile wider, but somehow he managed. “Yes, ma’am. Erebor has over four hundred acres of forest attached to it. I make sure the fences are in good order and I clear out the deer sometimes if the herds get too big. You’ll be working with the house gardens, so you shouldn’t need me for anything more than moving the heavy stuff. Would you like me to take your bags?”

“Oh yes, thank you.” In a moment, her bags were tucked under a tarp in the bed of the truck and Bella was bundled into the blessedly warm cab. The truck – clearly well-used and well-loved – had a faint earthy smell that brought back memories of Sundays in her mother’s car, traveling back from visiting the plant nurseries around Hobbiton. She found herself taking deep breaths, trying to pull the scent of growing things into her as deep as it could get, and stopped, grateful that the night hid the flush in her cheeks.

“It’ll be nice to have an expert gardener,” Bofur was saying, oblivious to her embarrassment. “I’ve no hand with plants meself, though I can recognize the edible ones well enough.”

“Oh I’m not…” she trailed off. She could hardly tell him that she _wasn’t_ an expert gardener, considering that she’d moved all the way to Scotland to do just that. “It’s not that hard. Gardening, I mean,” she said after meeting his inquiring gaze.”

Bofur shrugged good-naturedly. “If you say so, Miss Baggins. I’ll still leave it to your good self.”

The road they took was dark, darker than any she’d ever been on. The streetlamps had stopped shortly after they’d left the train station and passed through a large wrought-iron gate just outside the town limits. Since then Bofur had taken the truck on a twisted and winding road that passed through a forest. The trees seemed to go on forever, looming closer and closer on either side of the truck until it seemed like they would fall down and crush the vehicle beneath them. But then the truck emerged into the open air, steadily climbing up the hill towards a castle on the peak.

The land around them was etched with silver from the full moon that capped the peaks around them before spilling down to a small loch in the valley below. It seemed almost like a dream, the silver-leafed mountains surrounding a lake that blazed like white fire and the forbidding storm-gray castle overlooking it all. Bella gasped in wonder.

Bofur chuckled. “Ah yeah, the view will get ya. Every time.”

“Is it always like this?” she asked, her nose brushing the window.

“Tonight’s particularly clear,” he replied. “That doesn’t happen often. But the weather is always interesting in one way or another. You should see this place in high summer. Pity you’re coming in autumn.”

The castle loomed large over them as they approached...and then passed by. 

“Mr. Fundinson has set aside a rather lovely cottage for you,” Bofur told her when she turned to ask where they were going. “Had it fixed up last week. It’s a bit drafty, but with the fire going you’ll hardly notice.”

The cottage in question was indeed cozy looking, once one got past the forbidding gray stonework. Bofur carefully unlocked the front door, presenting her with the key as he did so, and left her to explore the cottage while he collected her bags from the truck. 

The cottage had one reasonably large room that housed a small kitchen, a breakfast nook by the front windows, and a sofa and two armchairs huddled close around the frankly enormous fireplace that took up the back wall of the house. A door off the kitchen revealed a closet of a laundry room and another towards the back of the house revealed a dark bedroom with it’s own (thankfully much smaller) fireplace and a bed, piled with quilts, that was shoved up against the wall.

“Miss Baggins?” Bofur called from the front room. “Where should I place your bags?”

“Oh, by the door will do, thank you, Mr. Bofur.” Bella bustled out into the front room, only to freeze as the lights in the house flickered and died, plummeting the room into darkness.

“Ah, one moment please, Miss Baggins.” There was the click of a lighter and a candle flame appeared by Bofur’s face, followed shortly by two more. “This old cottage doesn’t have the best wiring, I’m afraid. But there’s a good supply of candles in the cupboard there and you just let me know if you need more. Ah… there we are.”

The cottage’s whitewashed walls had seemed oddly cold under the glare of the electric lights, but with the growing number of candles, the warm fire-glow lent a coziness to the space that even the flickering shadows couldn’t dampen.

“There. Nothing better than a warm fire,” Bofur said, straightening from his crouch by the fireplace. Indeed there was already a little fire devouring the logs stacked in the andiron. “Oh!” He disappeared outside and returned with a covered basket. “I figured you wouldn’t be set up quite yet, so I brought you a spot of food.” He grinned. “And I can promise I didn’t make any of it.”

“Thank..you,” Bella replied, accepting the basket as if it might leap up and bite her.

“My brother Bombur’s the cook in the family,” Bofur winked. “He works at a cafe in town. I can take you there tomorrow if it’s to your liking. You’ll likely be needing to get groceries anyhow.”

She flicked a glance at the small, and likely empty refrigerator tucked into the corner of the kitchen. “Thank you, that would be greatly appreciated.”

“It’s settled then!” He beamed. “I’ll collect you at eight a.m. tomorrow, yeah? Oh, almost forgot.” He fumbled at his pockets, retrieving a crumpled slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it in a rough script. “That’s my landline, there. Phones almost always work up here so if you have any trouble, you just give me a ring.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Very well.” He tugged at the brim of his ridiculous hat. “It’s late, so I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, Miss Baggins. Good night!”

“Good night!” she called after him, but Bofur was already in his truck. He waved before he started trundling down the lane towards the far side of the property, the truck lights shuddering and bouncing on the rough gravel road.

The draft from the open door snuck under her skirts, sending cold tendrils of air dancing over her ankles and a few shivers down her spine. She wrestled the heavy door back into place, wincing at the scrape of wood on stone, and turned back to survey her new domain. 

It certainly wasn’t the smooth wood floors and plaster walls of Bag End, with their colorful paints and rich wood-stains. But the furniture looked sturdy and comfortable and the stone walls were already beginning to soak up the heat from the now-roaring fireplace.

“Oh if Lobelia could see me now,” Bella mused, chancing a peek inside the covered basket Bofur had given her. She gasped as a veritable feast unveiled itself before her, with scones and meat pies and a jar of stew and what looked like an orchard’s worth of fruit preserves. Her heart warmed in gratitude and she carefully tucked the food away, intent now only on reaching her bed.

She could question her decisions in the morning.

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

After some tea and scones for breakfast – and a newfound urge to meet this brother of Bofur’s who made scones like _that –_ Bella slipped into a nice long dress and her woolen winter coat and stepped outside. The air was crisp and cool and clear enough that she could see for _miles_ , all the way down into the valley with the loch and up again to the hills on the other side. Her breath caught at the sight of the forest, no longer foreboding, that was clad in the colors of fiery autumn as far as the eye could see.

Some part of her still ached for the comforting certainty of Bag End and the streets and houses she’d known since her childhood, but she couldn’t deny the thrill of excitement that danced in her stomach as she breathed in the sweet Highland air. She set off towards the main house with a faint grin playing about her mouth and her eyes as wide at they could go, trying to catch every detail.

Then she saw the castle.

Coming around the path, Erebor House stood open to the sky, with great streaks of soot reaching upwards from the windows like clawed hands. Most of the stones stood strong beneath the blue sky, but still some were cracked and broken from the long-ago fire. One of the wings of the house, less damaged than the rest, showed the signs of recent repair and habitation in the form of new windows and fresh-hewn doors, not yet old enough to have gained the marks that life would give.

Bofur found her gaping at the front of Erebor House, her mouth open in shock and horror at the destruction.

“Aye it’s not pretty is it?”

Bella jumped. “I...that is...I’m…”

He waved away her stutters. “Erebor House was destroyed in a fire almost a hundred years ago. It’s only recently that we’ve come back and started trying to fix her up again.”

She frowned in sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that. To lose one’s home… It’s horrible.”

“That it is.” He shook himself, his face splitting in what Bella was coming to realize was a customary grin. “Your carriage awaits, Miss Baggins,” he said, stepping aside and sweeping his hand to the side to reveal the pickup truck.

She found herself grateful on the ride to town that Bofur was so talkative, as he told her stories and histories and just general information without her having to say any kind of question at all.

Erebor House, he told her, had belonged to the Durinson family for generations. The current patriarch’s grandfather had come upon… a spot of hard times and had lost the House to both his follies and later the fire. Thorin Durinson, the current patriarch, had managed to regain the House and family fortune after a number of years fighting with the banks and legal courts. Now he was trying to restore the old property to its former glory.

“You’ve met Mr. Balin,” Bofur said. “Him and his brother Dwalin are Mr. Thorin’s third cousins on his father’s side. Mr. Thorin has two siblings himself, his younger brother Frerin and his younger sister Dís. Dís and her two boys are the only ones living in the house right now, as Mr. Thorin and the Fundinsons are out of the country on business and won’t be back for a few months at least. Frerin is still on tour with the R.A.F, so he’ll be away for a while.” He smiled at her alarmed expression. “Oh don’t worry. Ms. Dís is very nice, though she is a bit stern. Fili and Kili are...ah… troublemakers, y’see?”

“Teenagers?” Bella asked with a wry smile.

“Aye, that’s the truth of it,” he replied. “Kili, the younger, is a born prankster. And his brother joins him more often than not. They’ll not bother you though. They don’t concern themselves much with the gardens.”

“I see,” she said, as the forest resolved itself into the big wrought-iron gate that marked the edge of the property. “What exactly will I need to do with the gardens, if I may ask? It was not made quite clear to me.”

Bofur hummed. “Well, at the moment I can’t think of anything, save for cleaning them up a bit. Winter always comes earlier up here, so there aren’t many plants that I can think of that would survive a Scottish winter. So… just wait, I suppose. Make plans, maybe. Mr. Thorin and Mr. Balin should be back by very early spring, so you can make your proposals for the gardens then, yeah?”

In the daytime the countryside was stunning, and Bella found herself enjoying the twisting road much more than she had the night previous. Eventually, they reached the town, and Bofur made a beeline for a small café and tea-shop, situated on a street corner, that had a line out the door and wrapped halfway around the building. 

“Don’t worry about the line,” he said, after they’d parked and were headed towards the shop. “My brother knows we’re coming.”

They got a few smiles and friendly greetings as they made their way up the sidewalk to the shop door – or rather, Bofur did; Bella mostly got curious glances – and were met at the door by a slight young man wearing a cardigan.

“Hullo, Ori. Is your brother around? He told me to bring Miss Baggins here to the shop as soon as I was able and I don’t want him to think I haven’t done it.”

Ori beamed shyly at Bella. “Hello, Miss Baggins. Welcome to Dale.”

She smiled back. “Thank you. Everyone’s been so welcoming.”

“We don’t tend to get many newcomers here,” A silver-haired man – though he couldn’t be more than forty – came out from behind the counter, his eyes warm. “Especially not any that come to work on Erebor House.” He offered his hand. “I’m Dori. I run the shop. You’ve already met my brother Ori here, and Bofur of course. How are you doing? Did you get enough food? I’ve got a few spare blankets at home if you need any, just let me know. Oh, and cooking pots–”

Seated at a nearby table – clearly one he used often since he’d moved to it without hesitation – Bofur laughed. “Give the lass a chance to answer your _first_ question, Dori, before you go springing any more on her. We’re just here to grab a cuppa before running some errands.”

“Oh of course, where are my manners. What kind of tea would you like, dear?” Dori asked. “I’ve got all sorts: Earl Grey, Yorkshire, Basilur, a nice Irish Breakfast blend, some Ceylon…”

As Dori nattered on, Bella marveled on just how much things could stay the same no matter how far one traveled. With his attentiveness, Dori could have come directly from Hobbiton and she wouldn’t be surprised in the least. 

“Thank you,” she said, “I’ll have some English breakfast, please. With lemon?”

He beamed at her. “Of course, Miss Baggins. I’ll bring it out with some scones and cream, shall I?” He bustled off before she could answer.

The tea was stupendous, steeped to perfection, and the scones, piled high with devonshire cream and drizzled with honey, nearly melted on her tongue. Bofur regaled her with stories of the people who came into the tea-shop until Bella felt certain that she could tell anyone the family histories of everyone in the town for at least three generations previous. It was both different and yet to utterly similar to a morning in Hobbiton that she couldn’t help but start to relax. Before she knew it, she was smiling and conversing with Dori, Ori, and Bofur (and a few others whose names she didn’t catch) as if she’d done it every day of her life.

She was in the middle of discussing embroidery with Ori when Bofur’s mobile rang. His face grew solemn at whatever he heard, and when whomever was on the other line hung up, he turned towards Bella with a rueful look on his face.

“I’m afraid, Miss Baggins, that I’m going to need to take you back a bit early. My cousin tells me that a deer got caught in the fences again and he needs my help to set everything to rights.” he grimaced. “I am sorry. I know you wanted to go to the market.”

“That’s quite all right, Mr. Bofur,” she said, finishing the last of her tea. “Work comes first.”

“If you just wait a moment, Miss Baggins,” Dori called from behind the counter. “I can make you a basket. It should last until you’re able to make it out here again. Just let me know when you do. I’ll save a table for you.”

“Oh you don’t have to,” she said, her eyes widening as Dori came forward with an even _larger_ basket than she’d received yesterday.

“Nonsense. It’s not often I find someone who’s as discerning as I am about tea brewing. Most of the people who come here want _coffee_ for heaven’s sakes. So I’ll be glad for the company.”

She staggered slightly under the weight of the basket. “Thank you, Mr. Dori. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.”

He smiled and waved away her offer. “Feel free to call me Dori, Miss Baggins, and don’t you worry about the basket. Return it whenever you’d like.”

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

The gardens, now that Bella had the time – and the sunlight – to study them, were a mess. The front gardens were at least visually neat, due to all the plants being uniformly trimmed by – she suspected Bofur – a hedgeclipper. This led to a hodgepodge of plants, with thistles and weeds being mixed in with the plants that had survived the house fire and several decades of abandonment. If one didn’t look too close, it looked fine, but the closer you got…

She found the gardener’s shed a few yards from her cottage, filled to the brim with new and various tools. So she slipped into a pair of old trousers and a comfortable shirt and vest, pulled on her gardening gloves, and went to work. 

Piles of old weeds began to appear here and there, littering the path she’d taken as she moved through the front gardens from the road to the house. By the time lunch hit, the front gardens were mostly denuded of weeds, though they looked a bit like a chicken undergoing molting. She shoved the pulled weeds into a pair of under-used composting barrels that she found near the gardening shed and went to check on the state of the back gardens, collecting her bagged lunch as she went.

The side of the house were left primarily to lawns and woodlands, with the front gardens being structured in the French style, with a number of carefully managed hedges and flowers, each in their appointed place. Bella didn’t have a problem with the style, of course, this _was_ an estate, and French style gardens, she knew, were very popular with large estates. But she did have a fleeting hope that the back gardens (otherwise considered to be the family, or “working,” gardens) would be different.

She came to a gate, set in a chest high wooden fence, that had a sign on it, of the “Beware of Dog” variety. Except when she came closer, she realized that the “Dog” had been crossed out, and that “Swan” had been put in its place, with a number of underlines and exclamation points, and even a hastily drawn skull and crossbones clustered around it.

She glanced around, but saw no white feathered heads or even any kind of water-works that might tempt a swan to take up residence. As far as she knew, the closest body of water was the loch in the valley, and that was certainly far enough away that any swan was unlikely to come here. So she gripped her lunch bag a little tighter and pushed open the gate.

The garden was chaos.

Overgrown shrubs fought with their neighbors for every bare scrap of sun they could get, and the dead shoots of their conquests littered the ground for yards around the parent plant. Ivy had brought the far fence down, the wood leaning dangerously inwards. There may have been an herb garden by the kitchen, but the more delicate plants had since been subsumed by their more robust neighbors, until you couldn’t tell weed from herb, so thick were they clustered. Paths had been hacked half-heartedly into the brush, only to be abandoned after the first turn when every machete stroke simply revealed more walls of green.

Bella had her hands to her mouth in astonishment, more for just how _much_ the plants and weeds had grown in their decades long abandonment than for how much work she had to do to clear them. _Whatever was in the ground here_ , she decided, _it certainly led to some stubborn growth._

She found a reasonably clear patch of space just outside the former herb garden and – grabbing the folding chair that rested beside the back door – she sat herself down and opened her lunch bag, smiling at the savory sandwich that Dori had pressed into her hand as she’d left the tea shop that morning. 

A wind hissed through the fruit trees, set farther away from the back of the house – she saw a few damsons, apples, and plums there, if she wasn’t mistaken – and rustled the ivy on the toppled fence. Bella bit into her sandwich with all the fervor of having done a hard morning’s work, and while sitting there, she forgot for a while all the reasons she’d ever had for not gardening in the first place.

She was halfway through her sandwich when the hissing – having not gone away when the wind did but instead had started increasing – resolved itself into an enormous black swan, with a red bill and eyes, that burst from some of the overgrown bushes and charged at her, wings raised.

Bella squeaked and without thinking – for she had some experience with foul-tempered birds and knew the last thing you should do is provoke them _further_ – and swung her daisy-patterned lunch bag at the hissing, black-feathered head as soon as it came within reach.

With a hollow _thonk_ the bag connected, sending the swan staggering off-course into a wizened old rosebush where it flailed and spat before coming to a twitching, hissing halt, tangled in thorns and bits of ivy runners from the nearby fence.

Her heart hammered, but Bella cautiously approached the large black bird, her lunchbox held before her like a shield. It hissed as she got closer, flapping its wings as much as it could within the confines of its leafy prison. 

“I don’t suppose you’re the swan the sign told me about.” she asked, coming around until she could see the swan’s head.

It hissed in response.

“Where do you live then? I don’t know of any ponds nearby.”

More hissing.

She regarded it carefully. “If I let you out are you just going to attack me again?”

The swan clacked its beak and glared balefully at her with its blood-red eyes.

“So that’s a yes, then.” She sighed. “So be it. Bad-tempered you may be, but I’m not just going to leave you there.”

It struggled a bit when she reached for the thorns and vines surrounding its head, but Bella soon had a grip on the plants and the swan slid free after only a few moments. She stepped back quickly, collecting her lunch bag again, and stood with her back to a large lavender bush.

The swan, after preening a few of its feathers back into place, stared at her consideringly. Then, with a final warning honk, it waddled back into the undergrowth.

Bella stood there, one hand outstretched, the other pressed to her heart, and tried very hard to concentrate on breathing. _Whomever wrote that sign_ , she decided, _did not over-exaggerate_ enough. 

When a few minutes passed with no more foul-tempered fowl bursting out of the underbrush, she let herself relax and skirted back down the path towards the main house. _‘Attack swan’ indeed,_ she thought. _It’s no wonder the back gardens are so un-tended._ _I suppose I’ll have to deal with that sooner or later_. From what she could tell, the black swan may very well be as nasty as the geese at the Gamgee’s farm, and they were easy enough to deal with if you knew how.

Collecting her lunchbag, she put the swan out of her mind (though she did make a note to carry a broom with her next time she went out to the back garden) and continued her trip through the back gardens. They were more extensive than she’d initially realized, with twists and turns in the paths that hid whole fields from view, like the laundry lines where shirts and trousers fluttered in the faint wind coming from the valley.

She was so engrossed in cataloguing the various tasks she would need to complete before winter set in that she almost didn’t notice when the first fat droplets of rain started pattering on the leaves around her. It wasn’t until distant thunder rumbled that she realized how far she’d come and that rain was beginning to fall in sheets around her.

The curse she let out would have shocked Lobelia to fainting, if her cousin had been around to hear it, but it galvanized Bella to scurry back to the house, her gardening shoes slipping and sliding in the rapidly increasing mud. She nearly bolted past the laundry field, only to skid to a faltering halt at the sight of dozens of previously dry clothes hanging soggy and dripping from the lines. She spared a glance at the door to the kitchen, only a dozen yards away, but years of habit turned her back towards the sodden laundry, despite the rain that now dripped into her eyes and soaked her curls to straightness.

She gathered the clothes as fast as she could, slinging them into a basket she found at the base of one of the line poles and carting the whole lot to a door half hidden by ivy. Muttering a prayer under her breath, Bella leaned on the door and pulled at the latch. With a creaking groan, the door slid inwards, catching only slightly on the age-worn stone floor.

The room was a laundry room, boasting a high, wooden counter on the far wall and two slots where a washer and dryer were clearly supposed to go. The washer was in place – and humming – but the dryer stood in the corner of the room, still in its packaging. There was an interesting mix of old and new in the room, with the gleaming, high-tech washer/dryer set on one side and a large cast-iron stove on the other, recently cleaned but still wearing the grime of decades of use.

On the other side of the door, thunder boomed, rattling the laundry room’s tiny, overgrown window and sending a lashing of rain against the ivy-covered stone. Bella shivered, the wet chill from her clothes starting to seep into her skin and muscles. After a particularly strong shudder rattled her teeth, she made her way over to the cast-iron stove, hoping that the universe would be kind and give her fuel to light a fire with.

There was sparse fuel in the belly of the stove when she opened the feed door, but a quick look around showed some stacked firewood nearby that kindled quickly when she held a lit match to the logs. Within seconds a fire was burning away merrily in the stove and heat was slowly beginning to spread throughout the room, setting the wet clothes to steaming.

“Well this certainly wasn’t what I was expecting,” Bella muttered as she wrung out a worn pair of trousers – a teenage boy’s, if she had to guess, judging by the irreparable mud stains near the hemline – and hung it to dry on the laundry lines strung across the room from end to end. “Never seen a thunderstorm come up that quickly before in my life.” She flicked a shirt so the wrinkles lay straight and hung it beside the trousers, sending a glance towards the window.

The rain was still falling and the thunder still rolling and Bella had a sudden surge of homesickness for the Shire. Save for the thunder – and the sheer _volume_ of rain – the act of hanging laundry indoors during inclement weather had always been something she enjoyed. Less so, in recent years, with a mother slowly dying from nothing the doctors could find. But before… before her father’s death and her mother’s decline...before _everything_... Bella remembered sleepy afternoons with her mother in the laundry room, laying out clothes _just_ _so_ until they would lay flat in a chest of drawers with hardly any wrinkles at all. And then they’d take the clothes that needed mending and they’d retire to the couch by the fireplace and talk about the outrageousness of the local gossips or about gardens or Bella’s studies at the university and…

Her hand brushed an empty basket, the wicker damp and slightly swollen from wet clothes and rain. Without her knowing, she’d hung the clothes up exactly as her mother would have, with the seams lined up and pinned so that the clothes wouldn’t wrinkle while drying. But with the clothes hung up and drying, the fire sparking away happily in the stove, and the air turned to water outside, Bella found herself with nothing to do but wait.

There was a door towards the back of the room. It was on the wrong wall to lead back outside – and there was no sound of rain or feeling of dampness coming from it anyways – so the only way it could lead was back into the main house.

Baggins’ propriety dictated that Bella simply wait out the thunderstorm in the laundry room. She’d done the polite thing and hung up the clothing that would otherwise have gotten soaked. So now, the only thing to do was wait, at least until nightfall, for the rain to clear. But… Bella wasn’t just a Baggins. And despite the events of the past decade, well… she’d always been more of her mother’s daughter than her father’s.

It was that Tookish part of her, recently reawakened by her move to the highlands, that wheedled and cajoled and _pushed_ for her to go to that inside door and just… have a quick look around. It reminded her that she used to love old architecture, _and what would have more old architecture than a castle?_

Bella firmly stomped on that tiny voice, pressing her hands firmly into her stomach so they wouldn’t reach out and grasp the doorknob. After all, it really was _quite_ rude to go poking through a house without permission, especially if the house belonged to her employers. No, she would stay put and offer sincere apologies to anyone who walked into the laundry room while she was there, and that was her final word on the matter.

The Tookish voice grumbled but subsided, content – for now – to let her be. Shortly thereafter, almost as if it knew that waiting would test her resolve, the rain and the thunder eased into the light pitter-patter of a passing storm. Without further ado, Bella yanked open the door, wincing at its screech as the wood scraped against stone, peeked outside to make sure her ears had not deceived her, and made a quick dash back to her cottage, shivering all the way.

The one thing that she most definitely did _not_ do was look back at the manor house looming through the gloom and wonder what it would be like inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the enthusiastic response! I'm glad you like the story!   
> Once again, apologies for anything that's wildly inaccurate.
> 
> Come check out my tumblr: [starbirdrampant](https://starbirdrampant.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which baking is done, teenagers are fooled, and a new friend is made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks be to my ever patient beta imaginary_golux.

Autumn shortened into winter, bringing with it blisteringly cold winds, sleet, and frosts that lingered well into the day, if they even went away at all. Bella had arrived at Erebor house shortly before her birthday in September – much to Dori’s delight as he had immediately thrown her a party with food to rival all her previous parties in Hobbiton when he’d found out. 

She was, slowly, getting used to the weather, and had managed to clear most of the dead growth from the gardens before it became too cold to work outside for very long. Thankfully, the swan – whose name, she learned, was Smaug – had mostly left her alone, save for a few tense moments where woman and swan engaged in a wary staring match and the rare odd times that she found large clumps of sodden (and mostly chewed) watercress dotting the places where she worked.

To her surprise – and very sore muscles – Bella had managed to finish all of the work that she’d planned for the gardens before the freezing temperatures had sent her inside to huddle next to the fire in her tiny cottage. There was something about working oneself to near-exhaustion that was oddly liberating, though it didn’t help against her damnable curiosity.

Erebor House, with its towers and crenelations and eerie, broken archways and windows, had somehow managed to set little hooks of interest into her mind that just would _not_ go away. It hadn’t helped that early October had the seen the weeklong visit of a large cadre of stonemasons and ironsmiths led by a boisterously cheerful man called Dain, who’d led Bella around to each and every nook and cranny on the outside of the house and regaled her with its history while his workers patched up, rebuilt, and generally remade the exterior of the burned out old house from the ground up. 

There were a number of things that Bella had let fall by the wayside in her grief – she’d thought she’d lost the love of them, honestly – but every week living under the looming presence of the grand, broken old castle brought them all roaring back.

It was the first snowfall of the year – an unusually early one, by all accounts, if snow was falling in late October – that she found herself walking (again) by the back door to the kitchen of the main house. It’d become a habit of hers, often unconsciously, to stop and study the back door of the kitchen at the end of the day before the sun went down and wonder what kind of people lived in the old house. She’d never seen them, of course. In fact, if there hadn’t been lights turning on and off from time to time at night then Bella might have wondered if there were even people there at all.

The day had been long, the sun falling behind the hills earlier and earlier each day, leaving the house and grounds cloaked in shadow. Bella shivered as she trudged up the path, her gloved hands shoved deep in her pockets. The house loomed large before her, its broken roofline dark against the twilight sky; and that door, that dratted, infernal door that always pricked her curiosity, stood out in the gloom like a pale, ghostly beacon.

At a break in the path, Bella paused. She _ought_ to continue down the path to her cottage – she did, after all, have a stew in the slow cooker that Bombur had been pressing her to try – but that Tookish part of her, so often quiet, was giggling madly at the prospect of taking a slightly different route.

Her feet wavered, then turned, and she pressed upon the new waist-high gate to the kitchen garden. The garden itself was dull and bare, especially with the white dusting of snow that coated all the plants gone dormant for the winter, but Bella still absently checked for stray weeds, nodding in satisfaction when the garden remained as tidy as it had been a week ago.

The kitchen door itself – newly painted in such a shade of dull, uninspiring, utilitarian beige that Bella’s sensibilities, so used to colorful Hobbiton, wept for despair – was a simple enough door, sturdy and thick to keep out the cold. The handle was slick with condensation and a thin layer of frost that cracked and melted under Bella’s gloved fingers as she twisted the doorknob and hesitantly peeked inside.

A mudroom met her eyes, though it didn’t seem to be used often, judging by the dust on the bench for removing boots and the bare hooks on the wall. She toed out of her boots, stepping lightly over the slowly spreading puddle and padded on stockinged feet to the kitchen, only a few steps down the hall. 

The kitchen was… surprising, though she supposed it shouldn’t have been. Old-fashioned appliances dominated the space, from a 1950’s era icebox to an enormous wood-burning cast-iron oven and stove-top that took up an entire wall. A hearth, large enough to sit in, stood opposite, casting light from its banked fire over a large center table that gleamed honey-gold in the light. A sad cluster of herbs – rosemary and lavender – hung from one of the drying hooks running along the center beam while a paltry number of pots hung just above the stove top. The sink, perhaps the newest thing in the room, was an enormous stainless steel number inset in a worn butcher-block countertop underneath the window that looked out into the back garden.

Everywhere she looked, Bella could see the marks of past generations: scars that littered the center table from countless meal preparations and scrapes on the stone floor from chairs that were no longer there. There was even a dent in an oven door, obviously hammered out, but it lingered nonetheless, a memory of past mishap. Holes in the sides of the hearth lingered where pot cranes and roasting spits used to stand, their only reminders save for the old long-handled wood-and-leather bellows that leaned in a corner.

She paused for a moment at the foot of a small staircase that led up to the rest of the house, her curiosity warring with the part of her that fluttered its hands and wailed about propriety.

Her eyes caught on an ornate carving on the ceiling in the hallway that led away from the kitchen staircase. It was half cast in shadow, but the intricate detailing bespoke an attention to detail shown only by the most dedicated craftspeople. If the rest of the house had that…

Curiosity won.

There wasn’t much of the house that was livable, but as Bella wandered throughout the halls, she could see the echoes of the house’s old grandeur everywhere she looked. On top of it all were the marks of a house that was lived in. Boys’ shoes lay scattered in the front foyer. A jacket was draped over a chair in the formal dining room, right next to a well-creased paperback. A bowl, dirty with the lingering dregs of ice cream, sat on a staircase leading to the second floor. There was mud trod into the carpet of the front parlour, a pattering of feet that led around the chesterfield in gritty circles. 

It all spoke to the great house being a family home, rather than the mausoleum that even Bag End had turned into. Bella pushed aside the twinge of regret that’d surfaced at the thought, grabbing the bowl from the staircase and wincing at the state of the carpet in the front parlour. She’d stepped into the kitchen when it hit her. This was the answer to her problem.

A week before, when the sky had opened up and proceeded to attempt to drown nearly every living thing, Bella had lingered at Dori’s teashop, unwilling to step out into the deluge. With winter fast approaching, so too was a problem. If Bella couldn’t garden in winter, did she still have a job?

It wasn’t that she had to worry about the money. Lobelia may have been wrong in many things, but she was right in that a Baggins never needed to work for their living. Still, what did a gardener do in winter?

With her employers still mysteriously unaccounted for, she’d found herself at a loss. But this… this she could do. _Besides_ , she thought, wincing at the amount of dust she found on a mantelpiece, _it’s likely whomever lives here does not have the time to do this themselves. I would be doing them a service_.

Thus decided – and her conscience eased – Bella set about the task of tidying up the house with cheerful aplomb, though she set aside the muddy carpet for another day when she had more time. She swept and dusted and cleared in a fervour, until the hallways and the common rooms shone. (She left the bedrooms she found alone, there was, after all, a difference between maintaining tidiness and being horrendously nosy, and that was one she wouldn’t cross.) By the time the world outside had reached full dark, she’d managed to clean most of the downstairs, and was finishing up the final touches on a lasagna – they really had a frightfully small amount of groceries – when the front door opened and voices began to echo through the halls. So she wiped her hands on a towel – being sure to set it neatly back on its rack – and quietly slipped out the back door, uncertain of her welcome.

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

There was no knock at her door the next morning, nor was there a message left with Bofur, so the afternoon saw Bella in the garden, idly planning plant placements for spring, when odd lumps by the kitchen door caught her eye. On a closer look, the lumps resolved themselves into muddy wellingtons that lay in scattered piles about the back stoop.

Her fingers twitched.

Tsking, she stepped forward, and with a care to her jacket – a new one ordered for the winter since her usual coats were too light – she gathered the muddy boots together and carried them out to the garden and knocked them against a stone until the majority of the mud came off.

The mudroom, after she poked her head in, was even more horrifying, with mud and still-soggy trainers littering the floor amidst fallen coats and winter beanies. Bella pursed her lips in exasperation, eyes narrowing, and resigned herself to an afternoon of cleaning.

The mud trail led through the hallways to the main staircase, forcing Bella to hunt down a mop and bucket and scrub the floors until the aged stone did its best to gleam under her ministrations. That task done, she glared at the mud in the front parlour carpet until she fancied that it quailed under her cleaning and came up far quicker than it would have otherwise (and if she left a polite but slightly terse note about the benefits of making sure one had _clean_ feet before any romping took place, then she was reasonably certain no one would fault her for it).

Dinner that evening was even more abysmal, what with the utter lack of any edible groceries in the main house, so Bella popped over to her cottage, snagged a few potatoes, some leftover lamb, and various assorted vegetables that needed eating anyways, and whipped up a stew, leaving it simmering on the stove just as the front door opened and she, once again, slipped out the back door.

The next morning, after returning from a grocery run with Bofur, Bella opened the back door while juggling a ridiculously large number of grocery bags (it is possible she went somewhat… overboard), and nearly tripped over a small, chipped china plate that was filled to the brim with milk. She staggered, her fingers clutching at a bag of produce as it started slipping, and steadied herself against the wall before quickly making a beeline for the kitchen table and setting the bags on its surface.

This relieved, she retraced her steps to the mudroom with a frown that melted into a few blinks of astonishment at the china plate now lying in a puddle of milk. 

“What on earth…” She carefully lifted the plate off the floor, wrinkling her nose at the faint odor of lukewarm milk mixed with honey. She hadn’t seen a cat anywhere on the grounds, nor was there evidence of any pets at all. “Probably too worried about that swan,” she muttered to herself. But without a cat, there wasn’t any reason to set out a plate of milk...was there?

A few quick swipes of a damp towel were enough to clean up the spilled milk, and the china plate joined the others lingering in the sink from breakfast, for Bella to clean up later. And clean she did. After the groceries were put away, she made a few passes throughout the house, picking up the general clutter and running a cloth along the usual dust-catchers (the staircase, the cabinets, the tea tables in the parlour, etc.). She did note, with some amusement, that the shoes by the front door had clearly been shoved all to one side in a faint attempt at neatness, though there were still remnants of dirt from where they’d been kicked off initially. Still, she swept up the dirt and neatened the shoes until they were situated in pairs by size, and after a final walkthrough of the house, she returned to the kitchen to engage in what her father might have called “the weekly preparations for an utterly inept husband.”

(Her mother had always laughed at those words, and had laughed even harder when Bungo had made faces at her lack of rebuttal.)

She lost herself in the soothing motions of cooking. First, the bread for the week, left to rise by the oven. Then the beginnings of casseroles and stews, their ingredients carefully cut and separated for cooking later. Finally, after all the meals, snacks, and staples for the week were made, Bella set aside the remnants of the groceries to make cookies, biscuits, and cakes, smiling as her mother’s favorite saying came to mind.

“It’s all very well, Bella dear,” she’d say, “to have staunch, hearty foods to pad the ribs and vanquish the appetite, but if I had to eat all those things and not one tea-cake then I might as well eat my hat. It’d be about as interesting.”

_What would she say if she could see me now,_ Bella wondered. _Would she approve?_

Her mother had always been the wilder of her parents. She’d once traveled to _Cambodia_ , after all, when her father had hardly traveled any further than to Cambridge. “Perhaps you would be proud of me, mother,” she murmured as she rolled out a batch of shortbread. “I know I shocked my aunties something fierce when I left, Lobelia sent me five letters about it.” She grinned. “And I haven’t answered a single one of them.”

The last of the baked goods had been put away when the familiar sound of keys in the front door reminded Bella of the time and, as had been her habit in the past few days, she vanished out the back even as the sound of pattering feet raced towards the kitchen.

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

And so the week went. Three days turned to seven, then to fourteen, and before she knew it, Bella had formed a routine. In some ways, it was almost as if she’d never left Bag End. In others…

It wasn’t until the second week of finding plates, saucers, bowls, tea cups, mugs, and at one point even a slightly chipped shot glass full of a sticky mixture of milk and honey that Bella finally gave in to her confusion and asked Ori to meet with her for tea at his brother’s shop. She must have looked a fright when he arrived because he stopped dead in the middle of the café and approached her table as if it held a crate of dynamite.

“You said you had a question?” he asked, settling gingerly into his chair.

She made a face at his trepidation. “Oh it’s nothing serious, Ori, I just had a question about local customs.”

His expression cleared and he dug into the scones and jam before him with gusto. “In that case, Miss Bella, I’d be happy to help, though Dori really is better with this sort of thing.”

“I’m not so sure.” She sipped her tea, trying to find the words. “I was wondering if it was… common… for households to leave out some kind of plate with milk and honey?”

“Milk and hone– Oh you mean for the Fair folk! Well it’s not very common these days,” he told her, “but I imagine more families leave out offerings than not.”

“The… Fair folk?” Bella asked, nonplussed.

Ori gulped down a bite of scone and leaned in, his voice hushed. “You know, the Good Neighbors?” He dropped to a whisper. “ _Faeries_?”

“Fair– ”

“Shhh. Not so loud,” he cautioned, glancing from side to side, though no one seemed to be paying attention to their conversation. “Anyways, you leave out milk and honey for the Good People and they won’t make mischief in your home. That’s the hope anyways.” He frowned lightly at her. “Do you not have those in the South?”

Bella shook her head, wondering if she’d offended her hosts, perhaps, by cleaning and putting away all those dishes. “Not to this extent, heavens no. They’re considered superstition at best.”

Ori blinked. “Well I suppose that explains a lo– ” His hands flew to his mouth. “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, I just– ”

Bella laughed. “It’s alright Ori. I’m sure I’ve heard the same thing about Northerners. It does not bother me one bit.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Dori always said I let my mouth run away on me sometimes.”

“In your defense, it probably _does_ explain a lot about the South.” She grinned. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course! Did it help?”

She sipped at her tea before answering. “I’m afraid it may have raised more questions than answers, to be honest. But that’s hardly your fault.”

He buttered another scone. “Well let me know if you need help. I’m always happy to answer questions!”

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

It was a few days later when the milk and honey offerings… changed slightly. First it was milk and honey and a small plate of cookies surrounded by a fine line of flour. Then it was the usual milk and honey paired with a few of her sweet tea-cakes. These were seated on a plate that had been placed under a basket precariously propped up by two popsicle sticks.

It was almost certainly a trap, Bella decided, though for whom she could only guess. She’d done a small amount of research after leaving Ori in the tea-shop, and while the internet quickly confirmed that her employers were potentially more superstitious than she’d ever been privy too, she had to wonder if whomever was leaving these bits of food weren’t leaving them for… well… _her_.

Apparently there was a form of faery – Fair folk, she reminded herself – that was known as a brownie. It generally kept up a home in lieu of servants and would typically accept payment only in the form of milk and honey. (Clothes were somehow insulting? Bella wasn’t entirely sure on the details.) Bella, to her great chagrin, had slowly realized during her research that it was entirely probable that the Durinsons may believe they’d gained a brownie. She’d never met them, after all, and she certainly hadn’t told them she was caring for the house while they were gone. So they’d reacted in the only way they knew how, falling back on traditions that had sustained the local population for hundreds of years.

She stared at the basket, hovering uncertainly over the plate of tea-cakes, and was struck by what could be called the single most mischievous idea she’d ever had in her life. Not even her pranks with the tulips and the window pots in her younger years could be considered quite _this_ puckish. So, in the middle of her usual Monday baking, she left the main house and tromped along the path to her cottage.

Bella distinctly remembered packing her mother’s crochet hooks when she’d left for Scotland, and it was the smallest one that she looked for now. After a few moments digging, she unearthed the tool bag and a skein of fine gray yarn, and with a grin any one of the men her age back in Hobbiton would remember with alarm, she brought the whole lot of it back to the main house.

It had been a while since she’d crocheted, but to her relief, after only a few fumbles, she fell into the familiar movements and felt her plan quickly begin to take shape. Between baking and crocheting, the shadows lengthened and the day quickly passed. With only half an hour to spare before her employers returned home, Bella laid her finished work on the empty plate – having eaten the tea-cakes hours before – and casually flicked at the popsicle sticks holding the basket up. The wicker fell to the countertop with a rattling thud, sending one of the popsicle sticks skidding across the floor to rest by the icebox, and she stifled a grin at the sight.

Perhaps it was rude of her to taunt her employers so, but her mischievous amusement was too pervasive for her to regret it for long. So with a last aborted giggle, she removed herself from the kitchen and set off back towards her cottage for her own supper and an evening of cross-stitch. It’d been so long, after all, since she’d picked it up.

/// \\\\\ /// \\\\\ /// \\\\\

Dís pushed open the front door with a groan, her satchel slipping from her shoulder to slump on the floor. Finally divested of its weight, she sighed, feeling her near-perpetual scowl of the last month smooth from her face now that she was home. 

The front hall was shadowed, lit only by a dim light from the upstairs hallway. Voices echoed from the kitchen, growing louder and more argumentative as she left her satchel where it lay and headed to the back of the house.

“ _You’re_ the one who wanted to set up _traps_ , Kíli.”

“I didn’t think I’d _catch_ anything! It’s just a pair of little shoes, anyhow.”

“Great, so we stole his shoes. Now he’s going to spoil the milk, throw the ashes from the fireplace all over the floor, and put a blight on all of our wheat for a hundred years.”

“Don’t be a dunce, Fee. We don’t have any wheat.”

“Maybe not. But we do have his shoes. How are we supposed to get them back to him if he leaves because we _stole his shoes_. I– Mum!”

Her boys had been clustered around something they’d lain on the table, but when her foot scuffed in the doorway of the kitchen, they leapt to face her as fast as if she’d thwapped them with a dish-towel, their hand tucked fast behind their backs. 

She eyed their too-innocent faces, though their eyes weren’t as wide and pleading as she knew they could be, having come upon schemes of theirs in the past. Stealing shoes though… that was a new one.

She raised an eyebrow. “I suppose those ‘shoes’ you were talking about are going to find their way back to their owner sometime _very_ soon?” she asked, deceptively quiet.

Fíli and Kíli glanced at each other, their heads turning in concert. 

“Well, you see, Mum– ” Fíli started. Ever the serious one, her eldest.

“We have have a brownie!” Kíli blurted out, before clapping his hands over his mouth. 

Fíli’s hand met his forehead with a smack.

“... A brownie,” Dís said, her voice thick with disbelief.

Kíli shoved his hand at her. “See?”

In his palm, no larger than a fifty pence piece each, lay two finely crocheted gray...booties, complete with a tiny drawstring around the top where the shoe met the ankle. Smudges of flour lay on the bottom of both of them, as if a tiny person had been walking around on the countertops of the kitchen…

She flicked a glance around the kitchen, noticing the still-upturned wicker basket on the countertop as well as the gleaming cleanliness of the cabinets. She’d noticed before how much cleaner the house was, and she’d hoped that her boys had actually been doing the chores she’d set them, instead of the pranks and plots they’d prefer to do. But crocheting a pair of booties this fine was beyond their skills no matter how she looked at it. If they weren’t cleaning the house, then who was?

“A brownie,” she said, her voice flat. Both boys nodded vigorously. “I suppose they’re the reason why the house has been so clean these past few weeks? And for all the food in the refrigerator? And the laundry being done?” More nods.

Dís sighed, about to despair of her sons ever learning to be serious, when she was struck by a sudden thought. She doubted it had been a brownie that had been cleaning the house suddenly – in fact, she had a sneaking suspicion on who it actually was – but if her sons were willing to believe that it was a brownie…

“Well,” she told them, making sure to keep her smile hidden. “It’s about time you learned about the family brownie. I’m surprised it took them this long to come back, actually. Though I suppose the destruction of the main house is probably the reason.” Fíli and Kíli’s eyes were as round as they could possibly get, and Dís had to fake a disapproving sniff to avoid bursting into laughter. “I’m sure that if you cleaned up the kitchen, tidied your rooms from top to bottom, and cleaned those booties before placing them next to a plate of cookies, then our brownie will be sure to forgive you.” She raised an eyebrow. “Though your rooms will have to be _especially_ clean before midnight tonight or I imagine we’ll not be having unspoiled milk for an entire month at least.” 

For a beat, two beats, her sons stared at her in wide-eyed astonishment, as if uncertain whether to believe her. Then, with a joint inhale, she saw the _horror_ that fell over their eyes and stepped aside just quickly enough to avoid their sudden mad scramble to reach their bedrooms upstairs. She made sure to keep a straight face until she heard the thumps of their feet on the upstairs floors. Then, finally alone, she collected the gray booties from the floor where Kíli had dropped them and sank into a chair to laugh herself silly.

By the morning though, her boys’ rooms _were_ actually tidy from floor to ceiling, though Fíli and Kíli were especially sluggish and sleep deprived at breakfast. She had to chivvy them out the door just to be able to leave on time, and was nearly late to work herself when traffic snarled one of the main streets that led to her brother’s company. A minor shipping emergency, combined with the sudden flooding on the third storey ladies bathroom (and the resulting misery for the floors below), meant that when three p.m. rolled around, instead of deciding to stay to six, or seven, or _nine_ in the evening just to get things done, Dís succumbed to the urgings of her brother’s receptionist and left work early.

It was odd to see the house lit by the rays of the setting winter sun instead of the cold, silver gleam of moonlight. Odder still to see just how much the new gardener had gotten done in the scant few months she’d been there (especially since during half of that time it had been too cold to work outside). So instead of heading to the front door, she detoured to a side path and wandered her way through the winter-slumbering gardens to the back kitchen door. Here and there she caught glimpses of bare snow where plants used to be and wondered to herself what would come up through the earth once spring arrived.

Dís kept a weather eye out for the swan – what had Frerin called it? Oh right, Smaug – but there was no hide nor hair of the black, feathered beastie as she slipped through the garden gate and approached the kitchen door. She opened the door and nearly staggered as the heat from the mudroom washed over her like the heat of a forge, sinking into her bones and washing away the chill from tromping around in the snow in clothes meant more to get her from the house to the office and back. Before a draft could follow her in, she closed the door behind her, slid out of her coat, and shoved her soggy, muddy boots into cubbyholes just by the door. As she hung up her coat, however, Dís realized that she could hear a faint, lilting, humming drifting out from the kitchen to echo oddly around the mudroom. 

So, in stockinged feet, she padded up the stairs, down the hallway, and peeked around the edge of the doorway to the kitchen, only to freeze in shock at the sight of a woman about her age, in a pale blue and cream dress, standing to the right of the sink with what looked like a tiny foot-shaped sponge covered in flour. She was pressing the sponge to the countertop, leaving little, alternating floury footprints in a line around a plate with two half-eaten tea cakes on it, before trailing the footprints off the edge of the counter.

Dís stared at the woman in blank astonishment, shock and delight warring within her in equal measure (as well as more than a little smugness, she’d been right after all). 

“So this is our brownie,” she said, a smile creeping onto her face.

The woman jumped, biting back a shriek as she whirled around to face Dís, her hands clutched to her chest, smearing flour all over her apron. 

Unbidden, a laugh bubbled out of Dís’ throat. She clutched her hand to her mouth to stifle it, but it leaked around the edges of her fingers anyways until it was all she could do to keep from curling into herself with laughter. 

“I– I’m sorry,” she chuckled, “I didn’t meant to startle you, truly. It’s just, my sons have been talking about a brownie in the house, so to find you doing… that.” She waved a hand at the footprints. “It’s just too much.”

The woman shuffled awkwardly. “I’m terribly sorry. I hadn’t meant to intrude, it’s just that–”

“Oh no, you’re fine!” Dís told her. “In fact I approve.” Her smile turned conspiratory. “My boys could use someone pranking them like you have. I even managed to get them to actually clean their rooms last night.” She offered her hand. “I’m Dís, by the way. Am I right in thinking you’re the new landscape architect?”

The other woman blinked. “Oh yes. Yes I am.” She shook Dís’ hand. “I’m Bella. Bella Baggins. I _am_ sorry for intruding, it’s just that the house was…” she faltered, looking uncomfortable.

“It was filthy, I know,” Dís sighed. “Unfortunately I’m covering for my brother while he’s away on business, so I haven’t had any time to get this place cleaned up. You have my thanks for that, by the way, and for the cooking. Lord knows I’m a barely passable cook, so having you prepare those meals for us has been a godsend.”

“Oh,” Bella blinked, a slow smile beginning to edge its way onto her face. “Then I’m glad to help. You really do have a lovely house.”

Dís snorted. “What I have is a half-liveable wreck of a mansion. The house is Thorin’s baby. I and my boys are just here to make sure he actually remembers to eat, sleep, and bathe once in awhile. Otherwise he’d work himself to exhaustion.”

“I… see,” Bella said, looking vaguely alarmed. “Then your brother is lucky to have here to help him.”

“Of course he is,” Dís replied. “He’s rather like an absentminded sheepdog, really. He keeps getting involved in projects but he always has to make sure his people are okay. It leads to a fair amount of stress...the idiot. But,” she shrugged. “He’s my brother and I love him, so it works out well enough.” She eyed Bella’s footprint sponge. “So what made you want to pretend there was a brownie in the house? Not that I’m complaining mind, if you know my boys then you know their rooms are _never_ clean, but I am curious.”

Bella flushed. “I didn’t know what a brownie was at first, to be honest. Anything like that was always relegated to children’s stories. But I spoke with Ori at the tea shop in town, and he explained it.” She shrugged. “I hadn’t planned on doing anything, really, but then they set up the basket trap yesterday and I thought…” Her grin was fleeting but mischievous. “I suppose I thought it was rather rude of them to try and trap something that was only trying to help, even if it really was only me. So I paid them back in kind.” 

Dís nearly fell into a chair she was laughing so hard. “Miss Baggins, you have _no_ idea just how ironic that is. My boys – well, Kíli mostly – are well known for being pranksters, so to see them so taken in by those booties… Quite frankly, it’s about what they deserved.” Her laughter died to giggles. “You have my express permission to _keep_ doing it, too. I haven’t had so much fun confusing my boys in years.”

“Did they really clean their rooms?” Bella asked.

Dís nodded. “I told them that the ‘family brownie’ had finally come back and that if their rooms weren’t clean before midnight then we’d all be drinking spoiled milk for a few months.”

“Goodness,” Bella pressed a hand to her mouth, but a giggle slipped out anyways. “Are brownies really that bad?”

“They can be, in the old stories, which apparently Fíli and Kíli have been reading.”

“Well then,” Bella said, before setting the sponge aside and dusting off her hands on her apron. “They’d better keep their rooms clean.”

There was a moment of silence, then both women dissolved into laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check out my tumblr: [starbirdrampant](https://starbirdrampant.tumblr.com)


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